About the author

I am Mark de Vries, a 37-year-old lay Catholic from the Netherlands. I have been Catholic (and a Christian) since my baptism at the start of Easter of 2007, so experience and a lifelong education in the faith are not things I can fall back on. As a consequence I write as an interested layman with no basis in anything else than my short life as a Catholic.

About this blog

I am a Dutch Catholic from the north of the Netherlands. In this blog I wish to provide accurate information on current affairs in the Church and the relation with society. It is important for Catholics to have knowledge about their own faith and Church, especially since these are frequently misrepresented in many places. My blog has two directions, although I use only English in my writings: on the one hand, I want to inform Dutch faithful - hence the presence of a page with Dutch translations of texts which I consider interesting or important -, and on the other hand, I want to inform the wider world of what is going on in the Church in the Netherlands.

It is sometimes tempting to be too negative about such topics. I don't want to do that: my approach is an inherently positive one, and loyal to the Magisterium of the Church. In many quarters this is an unfamiliar idea: criticism is often the standard approach to the Church, her bishops and priests and other representatives. I will be critical when that is warranted, but it is not my standard approach.

For a personal account about my reasons for becoming and remaining Catholic, go read my story: Why am I Catholic?

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Tag: father andrzej kwaśnik

The news of the death of many of Poland’s highest-ranking government and military officials was hard to avoid today. Of course, most attention goes to the President Lech Kaczynski and his immediate entourage, and obituaries may be found here and there already. Military officials and members of parliament are undoubtedly also remembered by people and institutions close to them. Here in my blog I want to give some specific attention to Bishop Tadeusz Ploski of the Military Ordinariate, who was also aboard the doomed Tupolev that crashed today near Smolensk, Russia.

A short overview of his life:

Bishop Ploski was born in 1956 in the town of Lidzbark Warminski in the northeast of Poland. He entered seminary in Olsztyn in 1976 and was ordained to the priesthood of the Diocese (later archdiocese) of Warmia in 1982. From 1983 to 1986 he studied Church Law at the Catholic University of Lublin, after which he started working for the Polish bishops as a Church lawyer. From 1986 to 1992 he was editor of the Warmian diocesan newspaper as well as chaplain for the College of Education and the Academy of Agriculture and Technology in Olsztyn. In 1992 he was detached to the military. A year later he got his doctorate in Canon Law. In the years following he worked in various functions, always attached to the military, but also as a correspondent for Radio Vaticana and the Catholic News Agency. In 1998 he became a Professor in Religious Psychology in Olsztyn. He published some 150 articles about Canon Law and took part in numerous symposia and conferences about pastoral care and law in the military. On 16 October 2004, Pope John Paul II appointed him as bishop of the Polish military; he was installed on the 30th of the same month. Bishop Ploski was 54.

I’ve read rumours that Archbishop Henryk Muszynski, the Primate of Poland and as such the country’s highest cleric, was also considering joining the delegation to Katyn in Russia, which would join Russian officials in a remembrance for the Polish and Soviet victims who were murdered there in World War II. If true, the Archbishop evidently elected to stay at home, so avoiding a virtual disabling of the Church in Poland, not unlike the government has now been disabled.

Also on board the Tupolev were the following representatives of the Polish Churches: Archbishop Miron Chodakowski, Orthodox chaplain to the Polish military; Father Jan Osiński, field chaplain; Father Bronisław Gostomski, Father Jósef Joniec, Father Zdzisław Król and Father Andrzej Kwaśnik, priests.

I live in a city where there is a large Polish Catholic community. Judging by what I read on the Internet I can only imagine how they must feel. In a sign of solidarity I will join them for their Mass tomorrow morning at 11:15, at the church of St. Francis.